and more difficult, esoteric and bewildering. It's a crazy contradictory stew indeed. Personally I think it's weaker than Tilt and The Drift but I'm still glad he's out there doing what the fuck he likes. I wouldn't have it any differently, whether I like the records or not.

The more playful approach works for me. This article is just a big old self-indulgent crywank that Walker isn't making the kind of records that he wants to listen to. I think. There were a lot of words and I'm really hungover

But I managed to focus enough to glean that the writer stuck with Scott up to & including The Drift, but feels that Bish Bosch is just taking the piss a bit. And I like self-indulgent crywanks personally.

But for me, it's utterly puzzling that someone who stuck it out through the unremitting The Drift then finds Bish Bosch - an album which, whilst still highly oblique and challenging in parts - has a far greater sense of play and humanity to it than its predecessor. To use a metaphor: if The Drift was Walker's Beckett album, then Bisch Bosch is his Pynchon album.

But I've come to the conclusion that I just don't have the patience for Bish Bosch. I accept his right to make the records he wants to make and not the ones I want to listen to, and I've gone with him over the years but it just gets harder and harder with each album not to suspect that the Emperor is actually not wearing very much.

I don't demand art that is simple or non-challenging, but his lyrics in particular are so obscure that they are actually meaningless, and the package as a whole seems to me to be devoid of any emotional or intellectual impact. I don't necessarily hanker for the early 60s sound, but even Climate of Hunter (which sounded pretty avant grade at the time) seems uncommonly beautiful and moving compared to the arid Bish Bosch.

I think Alex Petridis gets it bang on when he says, in the passage quoted in the article that 'it's music that clearly requires a lot of time and effort to fully unpick, while defying you to play it often enough to actually do that.'

So farewell the Scott, I still admire you, I just don't want to listen to your records anymore (the new ones anyway)

I've picked a song and a few lines at random, it could be from anywhere on the record:

Kyrie’s lone whistler in the shadows.
Simitar sideburn, charging on the purple
purlieus, scrape to
Goitres gray carnation
through the stubble.
Epicanthic knobbler
of ninon, arch to
Macaronic mahout in the mascon.

I've really tried, but I can't get anything out of this stuff at all. I don't need lyrics to be prosaic or straightforward, I don't even need to be sure that I understand them, but I want to feel that at leas they're meant to convey something. A lot of time on Bish Bosch (not all of the time, some of it is more direct) it feels like he's just being wilfully obscure - almost as if he's got a list of unusual words that he's determined to get into the songs whatever happens.

If you listen to something like The Electrician or Sleepwalker's Woman from Climate of Hunter the lyrics are complex, allusive but they also convey meaning and they're poetic. Scott seems to have concluded that even stuff like that is too easy listening for us. He's entitled to do so, but I just think he's been going further and further down a blind alley over the course of the last three albums. I've been following him so far but I've decided to turn back now.

I wouldn't mind if the record was enjoyable to listen to, but I found I had to steel myself to go back to it. Gruelling is the word that springs to mind. I'm just not getting enough from it to make it worthwhile. If that's 'bullshit' then so be it, but it's an honest opinion not expressed without a fair amount of thought because, as I've said, I've got a long history with Scott and nothing will stop me loving the albums of his I've always loved

it's obvious that the lyrics aren't meaningless, and that there's quite a detailed process of construction. Granted, they aren't direct, and are at times difficult to understand, but not meaningless. I get why you prefer the likes of Climate Of Hunter for striking a better balance between communication and obtuseness, but I just think that calling the current stuff meaningless is clearly overstepping it.

Really sums up the problem. I don't mind putting the effort in to get more out of something, but what's missing with Bish Bosch is that initial connection from a piece of art that encourages you to persevere with it. As I've said above I find it arid and over intellectualised.

As it happens, I have read quite a lot of the interviews around the time of the release because, as I've said, I'm a fan. I still can't get any sense from 'epicanthic knobblers of Ninon' or 'macaronic mahouts'.

Perhaps it's a record for people who are cleverer than me. Good luck with it.

the recent trilogy, but they also have their place, and thought Bisch Bosch was actually a fair amount more fun than the previous 2, even if it was at the same time less cogent somehow...

Thing is I don't think he'll ever probably top Scott 4, and I can go back to that endlessly, I'm glad he's not repeating himself, but yes hope his next album maybe will be one I can put on in the car more. Sounds like it may be.

Bish Bosch is a very rewarding listen if you're willing to invest the time. Most people aren't, and the worst part is that some of those listeners seem the most apt about discussing it... in a negative light. Of course.

I'd rather see somebody say, "This album or artist simply isn't for me." versus "I don't get it thus it doesn't make sense. What a wanker."

I consider Scott to be a true artist and he's got every right to make his own artistic choices. I've just made the decision that the route he's chosen is not for me. I'm sure that brings me a lot more sadness than it does him.